Pollution team swoops on scrapyard

Pollution control team leader Rowan Carter after the Cash for Scrap raid. Picture / Dean Purcell

A serial polluter scrapyard was forcibly closed yesterday in a rare legal move by officials to seize an industrial site under the Resource Management Act.

The Auckland Regional Council pollution team swooped on Cash for Scrap in Otara, cordoning off part of the site with help from police and security guards.

A steel weighbridge was partly dismantled and heavy trucks and a crane were lined up to take it away before the company's lawyer, Cliff Lyon, was granted leave for a hearing in the High Court this morning to challenge the action.

ARC pollution team leader Rowan Carter said it was the first time the council had seized an industrial site under rarely-used powers under Resource Management Act.

"The company has been in defiance of enforcement orders and has no consents to operate. This is a last-ditch effort," he said.

The interruption was "frustrating" because the company had breached environmental laws for five years.

Earlier, angry company manager Ray Moorhead ordered media off part of the site and tried to stop a cameraman from filming.

Cash for Scrap's Bill Conway has a lengthy record for pollution offences, serving half of a three-month prison term last year for convictions in 2004, the first jail term for pollution offences in New Zealand.

He is currently appealing against another three-month sentence for breaches of the Resource Management Act. His wife, Carol Down, faces a one-month sentence.

She is named as sole director of Millineum Investments which owns part of the Cash for Scrap site and is listed as sole director of Cash for Scrap.

All up, the scrap company has been ordered to pay the regional council about $150,000 in fines and costs since 2001 but Mr Carter said he did not know how much had been paid.

Heavy metals, petrol, diesel and toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have all been detected by the regional council at the site.

Cash for Scrap operates over two adjoining sites at 11 and 13 Bairds Rd. Only the site at number 11 was legally able to be shut down under orders issued by the Environment Court last year. But dismantling the weighbridge meant the business was unable to operate.

Mr Lyon called the raid a "fiasco". "The ARC are like something out of Ghostbusters, throwing their weight around, they're vindictive," he said. "They are hell-bent on putting this person out of business. The client is not the easiest guy to handle but neither is the ARC."

Warren Tyer, owner of a light-engineering shop next to the yard, said he had made 28 complaints about Cash for Scrap to the council about pollution, noise and parking.

"It's an absolute disgrace, if this was Remuera something would have been done but it's in the middle of Otara," he said.

Newly-appointed Cash for Scrap operations manager Glenn Murray said the company was operating responsibly.